Biographical Information

I was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA in 1948.

I studied psychology, art and literature at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. After graduation with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 and completing U.S. military service in 1972, I began my art career in California before moving to Switzerland in 1974 where I now live and work. I am married to Heidi and have two children, Louis and Alexander.

My involvement with space activities began over forty years ago when I had the fortunate experience to personally witness the beginnings of the U.S. space program while living in the immediate vicinity of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center (1959 -1970). During the Apollo program I had summer jobs at KSC in 1968 & 1969.

This early experience with space had an impact on my art and in the mid-1980’s I introduced a number of art-in-space projects beginning with the O.U.R.S. – Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite which I initiated in 1985. Once in orbit the O.U.R.S.  was designed to be visible to the entire world as “a circle in the sky” to celebrate our passage into the new millennium with a symbol of global unity and peace. To be visible to viewers on Earth the O.U.R.S. sculpture would be approximately 1 kilometer in diameter and was based on an inflatable technology under development by the European Space Agency, (ESA), for large space structures.

O.U.R.S.
Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite

To test the concept and the technology, a prototype of the O.U.R.S. was proposed in 1988. This object, an inflatable sculpture with diameter of 6 meters  was called the “OUR-Space Peace Sculpture”. It was  intended to mark the 1992 International Space Year. A full sized test object was constructed in the Soviet Union by NPO Energia the Russian space company which built a number of spacecraft including Sputnik, Salyut and the Mir.  The OUR-Space Peace Sculpture was designed to be deployed from the Mir station by a cosmonaut during a spacewalk. The deployment would have been recorded on video and transmitted to viewers on Earth. Although the project was quite developed, unfortunately, the uncertainty associated with demise of the USSR in 1991 prevented this project from being realized and this, in turn, resulted in the postponement of the O.U.R.S. project for the year 2000.

O.U.R.S. Space Peace Sculpture
Full sized inflatable model built ny N.P.O. Energia 1990

However, as the Russians were keen to open their space program to Western involvement, I managed to realize my first art project in space when my Cosmic Dancer, a painted aluminum sculpture weighing 1 kilogram was launched on May 22, 1993. The Cosmic Dancer was specifically designed for the Mir space station and the purposes of this project were to investigate the concept of sculpture in weightlessness as well as the viability of integrating art into a space habitat and into the world’s space programs in space. The cosmonaut crew consiting of Gennadi Manakov and Alexander Polischuk made a 28. min. video of themselves interacting and dancing with the sculpture and provided a commentary about the experience. To my knowledge, my Cosmic Dancer was never returned to Earth and may have been on the Mir when it was de-orbited in March, 2001. www.cosmicdancer.com

The Cosmic Dancer sculpture on the Mir space station

In the mid 1980's in initiated the O.U.R.S. Project - www.ours.ch, a cultural and astronautical organization dedicated to introducing, nurturing and expanding a cultural dimension to humanity's astronautical endeavors. In addition to being a vehicle for the development of my space art projects, the O.U.R.S. Project organized the first European Space Art Workshop held in Montreux, Switzerland in 1992 and was co-organizer, along with Leonardo/OLATS and the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) of the 9 space art workshops (1997-2005) held first in Paris and then later in other venues. In cooperation with Leonardo/OLATS/IAA and with the sponsorship of ESA, we developed the “Spacearts: The Space Art Database” project which has been online since 2003. www.spacearts.info

The O.U.R.S. Project also organized or co-organized international exhibitions of space art held at the International Astronautical Congresses (IAC) in Oslo, 1995, Turin, 1997 and Melbourne in 1998.

I served as co-chair of the IAA sub-committee on the arts and literature and from 1996 – 2003, I was involved in the planning of the IAA sessions related to the arts and humanities held at the annual IAC congresses.

I have co-organized several ESA and IAA studies including the design and maintenance of the related websites:

• ESA study – “ITSF: Innovative Technologies in Science Fiction for Space Applications”: which has also conducted two international competitions for Science Fiction short stories.
  www.itsf.org
  
  
• IAA study - “The Impact of Space Activities on Society”: where world leaders were invited to comment on the importance of space activities.
  www.spaceandsociety.org
  
  
• IAA study - “Space Expectations: How the Public Views Space Activities”: a multilingual survey in 7 languages of the public’s expectations about space. The preliminary results will be presented at the current IAC in Glasgow and please take the survey.
  www.space-expectations.org

I have also just recently completed a website dedicated to the memory and work of space art pioneer Ludek Pesek who died in 1999. www.ludekpesek.ch

Presently I am actively promoting the concept of "The Space Option" an evolutionary plan to meet the basic and anticipated needs of humanity through the utilization of near Earth resources - not for the in-situ support of science or exploration - but rather to apply these resources and/or their products for use on Earth at a conspicuous level. Most significantly, the harnessing of energy from space would replace humanity's dependence on the continued use of finite fossil fuels which are environmentally negative and likewise, on the widespread use of nuclear fuels which have grave environmental and political aspects. The concept was developed as an answer to the persistant question of: "Why Space Art?" which was really the question: "Why Space?".

I have been a member of the IAA - International Academy of Astronautics www.iaaweb.org since 1995 and was elected a Fellow of the I.A.A.A. - International Association of Astronomical Artists in 2000. www.iaaa.org

My terrestrial activities include the development and management of swissart.NET - an arts portal that has been providing information and web services for the contemporary arts in Switzerland since 1996. www.swissart.net

I also have my own art gallery in the historic town of Stein am Rhein, Switzerland where I exhibit my hyperrealistic paintings about nature. www.arthurwoods.ch

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."
 
Robert Heinlein